Typing in the number for her asset at Reagan, she quickly made arrangements for the private jet. Then she opened the top drawer of her bedside table and pulled out her trusty Sig P228. When she first joined the CIA, she’d come to terms with the unsavory idea that at some point during her career, she would probably be forced to use her sidearm for more than simple dissuasion. But as the years dragged on, and the occasion for violence never presented itself, she’d begun to think perhaps Fate had thrown her a bone, kept her out of harm’s way so she would never have the weight of a lost life anchoring down her conscience.
Of course, Fate wasn’t known to be a fickle bitch for nothing. True to form, all Olivia’s good fortune had ended in the most inconceivable way that day in the high desert when somehow, someway—she’d since come to suspect the mysterious CIA leaker’s involvement—her cover had been blown, and she was forced to end a man. It had been awful. Worse than she’d imagined. Particularly since that death had resulted in a blowback that claimed the life of one courageous American warrior.
Not for the first time since that disastrous mission, she questioned whether she wanted to continue working for The Company. The stress she could handle. The danger and the intrigue? Piece of cake. But the killing and the death… Those were whole other ball games, weren’t they?
“Sonofabitch,” she cursed, shaking her head at herself. “Get it together, Mortier.” Forcing some steel into her spine, she straightened her shoulders and took a quick look around the tiny loft she kept in Washington, DC.
A full-sized bed with a drab, gray coverlet took up most of the space. It was flanked by two nondescript bedside tables she’d purchased five years earlier from IKEA. Not one piece of art graced the brick walls. Not one photo sat on a shelf. And rounding out the whole antithesis ofBetterHomesandGardensdecor was the uninspiring desk and chair she used on those rare occasions when she was home and needed to work on her laptop.
As she turned toward the kitchen, the yellow wash of the overhead light revealed that the ivy plant she’d impulse-purchased a month ago—or had it been two months ago now?—had shriveled up and died in its pot on the windowsill. Its once-glossy leaves were brown and brittle. They seemed to mock her in death. Apparently she couldn’t even keep one hardy little vine alive. And that was just…something. Sad, maybe? Pathetic?Moreliketypical.
“Not leaving much behind, are you, old girl?” The words seemed to echo around the cramped space, circling back to slap her in the face.
There had been a time, not so long ago, when she would have laughed at the melancholy turn of her thoughts. After all, the only thing she’d wanted since she was fourteen, sitting under the big oak tree in the orphanage yard and reading Tom Clancy novels, was to be a spy. Aloof. Unattached. Indifferent.
But something had changed in the last several months. Something was…missing.
A place to really call home? People to care about? People who cared abouther?
Sh’yeaaah, as if. She’d never had that. Never needed that. Neverwantedthat.
But maybe it was recently reaching the milestone of her thirtieth birthday, or perhaps it was some sort of sadistically ticking biological clock thing, because the words sounded hollow even though they were banging around inside her own head.
Okay, so if she wanted to be completely honest, the truth was that ever since Syria, ever since meeting Leo, ever since that kiss…
Holyhell! That kiss!
Even now, anytime she thought about it, she got all soft and gooey inside. All estrogen-y and womanly and not at all CIA agent-y, which was…not exactly something she was proud of, but there you go.
“Sheesh, Mortier. You’re a sad piece of work. You can’t let one little smooch—” Wait…little? That kiss hadn’t come anywhere close to beinglittle. In fact, in theGuinness World Records, you could probably find it under the title “Deepest and Hottest Lip Lock of the Century.” Because it’d been alongtime coming. Three months to be exact, ever since they first locked eyes on each other. And just when she was beginning to think the man wouldnevermake a move, he did.
They’d been standing in front of a weapons locker checking their inventory, of all things, when he suddenly turned to her, placed a warm, callused hand beneath her jaw, and lowered his head. His hot breath had whispered across her lips the second before his mouth landed atop hers. And when his tongue slowly, languidly pushed inside? Well, like a pin pulled from a grenade, her passion had exploded and her knees had buckled beneath her. Actuallybuckled. Which she’d thought only happened in sappy rom-coms and cheesy romance novels, but she’d learned that afternoon that fiction really did mirror fact.
Well, whoopty-friggin’-doo! Good for you!Not.
She squared her shoulders and tried again. “You can’t let one kiss throw a wrench into your entire life plan.”
There. Done. She’d said it. And it was sound advice. Unfortunately, she knew it was advice she’d be hard-pressed to heed. Because she was mere hours away from seeing Lieutenant Leo “the Lion” Anderson again…
* * *
7:34 a.m.…
Everything inside Leo’s skull—gray matter, blood, cerebrospinal fluid, what have you—had congealed into one giant throb of hangover pain. He lay motionless in the hammock strung up between two palms. The shrillcock-a-doodle-dooof the rooster that had stowed away on the catamaran during one of their many supply runs from Key West to Wayfarer, and the fact that Meat was bathing the fingers of the hand he had hanging over the hammock in rancid doggy slobber, made Leo seriously consider the possibility that he might be doing himself and everyone else in the world a giant favor if he tied a load of rocks around his waist and chucked himself into the ocean.
Why?Why had he thought it would be a good idea to polish off the last of the beer with his uncle after Doc, Romeo, and the ladies turned in for the night? He was a reasonable, rational, grown-assed man. So, repeat,whyhad he done this to himself?
Oh yeah. That’s right. Because without the benefit of his friends’ ribald conversation to distract him—and probably owing much to Doc’s knob-wobbling comment—his mind had shot like an arrow from a speargun straight to Olivia and that god-awful mission. To dull the memories, one still so painful it made it hard for him to breathe and the other so damned hot it made him hornier than a forty-year-old virgin, he’d chosen door number two when his uncle asked him, “So, you want to talk about it, or you want to drink about it?”
Badidea. Really,reallybadidea.
A dullshnick-ing sound told him his uncle had just pressed Play on the bright-yellow boom box circa 1980-something that sat on a small wrought iron table on the front porch. The thing ate D batteries by the half dozen and came equipped with exactly three cassette tapes: Bob Marley, Harry Belafonte, and Jimmy Buffett. Just those three because his uncle’s musical tastes were embarrassingly limited, and because the rest of the guys wouldn’t have the first clue how to contribute to the selection of tunes because, you know…cassettetapes. Enough said.
Leo had a brief moment to wonder which song his uncle had chosen to start off the day when—ah, Christ, I should have known—Bob Marley started crooning in his Jamaican accent tosmilewitdeerisin’ sun!
“Shit,” Leo groaned as he carefully lifted the hand not being bathed by Meat’s big, wet tongue. He pressed it to his forehead as he slowly, gingerly pushed into a seated position, careful to keep his eyes slammed shut against the merciless rays ofdeerisin’ sunalready hanging hot and heavy above the eastern horizon.
Unsteadily climbing from the hammock, he stood and concentrated on sucking in deep, steadying breaths. The pungent aroma of Uncle John’s favorite chicory coffee tunneled up his nose. “Shit,” he muttered again as he slowly peeled open one eyelid.
